At least four online fundraising campaigns on a popular website have raised more than $310,000 in less than a week on behalf of the loved ones of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights.
Representatives of the family, however, advised in an e-mail on Tuesday that all donations be sent to Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church at 501 W. Lawson Av. in St. Paul and not to the GoFundMe efforts.
In their few days of existence, each GoFundMe page has been peppered with questions about their legitimacy and whether the money will actually go to the stated recipients.
While GoFundMe officials say online that it's up to potential donors to size up what's legitimate, a spokesman for the crowdfunding site said Tuesday that the company seeks to weed out fraud.
"It's important to understand," GoFundMe spokesman Bobby Whithorne told the Star Tribune, "that fraudulent campaigns make up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all GoFundMe campaigns. We have a thorough verification process, deploy proprietary technical tools, and a dedicated team … works around the clock to monitor fraudulent behavior."
The most successful of the four campaigns invoking Castile's memory was started by Xavier L. Burgin, a filmmaker working in Los Angeles who doesn't know the family. He was motivated to help because "I've seen these problems before" of young black men being killed by police in the United States, he told the Star Tribune Tuesday.
His fundraising page roared past its $100,000 goal and stands at more than $187,800, with the sole stated recipient Valerie Castile, Philando's mother. Burgin repeatedly reassured visitors to his page of his good intentions.
He first set the campaign's goal at $20,000 "to make sure I wasn't asking too much," he said Tuesday, but soon raised it several times over after being "truly shocked and inspired by how much people want to help and wanted to give."